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Howland Family Papers
The Howland family of East Greenwich, R.I., figured prominently in New England Quakerism during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and contributed to the state's public affairs. Brothers Daniel (1754-1834), an approved minister, and Thomas Howland (1764-1845), an educator, were active members of the Society during the tumultuous years between the 1780s and 1840s, caught up in the moral demands for a response to slavery and other social issues and in the divisions wrought by evangelical influences.
Centered largely on the lives of Thomas Howland, his brother Daniel, and Daniel's son Daniel, the Howland collection is an important record of Quaker life in Rhode Island during trying times. As meeting elders, the Howlands monitored and contributed to the era's major controversies, and the collection is particularly rich in discussions of the impact of slavery and the passionate struggle between Friends influenced by the evangelically-inclined Joseph John Gurney and the orthodox John Wilbur. Thomas' complex response to his commitment to the antislavery cause and his fear of disrupting meeting unity is particularly revealing. Also of note is a series of responses from monthly meetings to queries on compliance with Quaker doctrine, obtained during the decade after the American Revolution.
- Antislavery movements--Rhode Island
- East Greenwich (R.I.)--History
- Peace movements--Rhode Island
- Temperance--Rhode Island
- Bassett, William, 1803-1871
- Brown, Moses, 1738-1836
- Friends' Boarding School (Providence, R.I.)
- Gurney, Joseph John, 1788-1847
- Howland, Daniel
- Howland, Daniel, 1754-1834
- Howland, Thomas, 1764-1845
- Moses Brown School
- New England Yearly Meeting of Friends
- Shearman, Abraham, 1777-1847
- Society of Friends--Controversial literature
- Society of Friends--History
- Tobey, Samuel Boyd, 1805-1867
- Wilbur, John, 1774-1856


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Millennium Falcon Wall Cling
She may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts.
- Vinyl wall decal of the majestic Millennium Falcon
- Over six feet long and four feet high
- Easy on, low-tack adhesive, means no mess!
The Corellian Engineering Corporation has been a mainstay starship designer in the Galaxy for centuries. They are experts in manufacture of everything from the lowliest escape pod to the mightiest capital star cruisers. The CEC is a known and trusted entity throughout the history of both the Old and New Republics, and Empire to boot.
But what they're best known for is a tiny forgotten light-stock freighter - the YT-1300. You might not know the model number, but perhaps you've heard of the Millennium Falcon? That's right - that venerable old freighter may not look like much, but she's got it where it counts. Plus, even now, it's still full of surprises.
It's heavily modular design means you can convert the interior for cargo, passenger, or even modified as a fast heavy bomber for the military. The superstructure is extremely rugged, and hot rodders have been able to install hyperdrives from capital ships pushing her point-five past light speed. You'd think, though, with all that speed, it would maneuver like a wounded bantha, but did you know that the Falcon herself was able to slip past the Kessel black-hole complex in less than twelve parsecs? Astonishing!
The CEC YT-1300 may not be the sleekest starship out there, but a true connoisseur of starship design can see she's a real work of art. While you might not be able to fit one in your living room, you can still enjoy her beauty as a piece of art on your wall! Captured in durable vinyl, this wall decal is over six feet long and almost four feet high! The low-tac adhesive means it's just a one-man job to put her up, and requires no special tools or messy paste.
And if you need to reposition it, or even remove it, it comes down with no residue, or peeling paint. And while it'll never make the jump to lightspeed hanging on your wall, it'll still look like a million credits.
- Six feet four inches long
- Three feet five inches heigh
- Easy to apply peel and stick vinyl
- Adheres to any smooth surface
- Low-tac adhesive means it's easy to reposition and remove
- No special tools required to apply

subset: commoncrawl


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What is a database, really?
I'm very happy to see this video. I've been struggling to explain these concepts (among others) to my kids. This video is definitely the best explanation I have seen to date.
YOW! 2011: Simon Peyton-Jones - Closer to Nirvana
Is Haskell to complicated to teach to school-age children? Nobody told this guy:
Lucian Wischik: Async Compiler - Bug Fixes, Updates and Core Improvements
Just FYI, I've tried three times now to download and play this content through the Zune desktop software. Each time I try to play it, it gets about 20 seconds in and then drops out with an error message about the file being "corrupt or not valid".
I'm currently downloading the WMV version directly from the site, which I assume will work.
Stephen Toub: Async Update - Technical Overview and Building Awaitable Types
I tend to think that so-called fluent APIs are sometimes abused, but it seems to me that something like
await t.ContinueOnCapturedContext();
would be more readable and a more flexible pattern for dealing with future unknowns.
C9 Lectures: Greg Meredith - Monadic Design Patterns for the Web 3 of n
This presentation is definitely touching on some concepts that I've wanted to understand for a while now. In some ways it's been enlightening. In other ways, I don't think I'm any farther ahead in my understanding.
Even if I don't feel completely enlightened, I'm quite pleased that this has crystalized for me exactly why I struggle to understand these concepts.
Firstly, I often don't know if a particular statement is to be accepted axiomatically, or whether I should be able to deduce it myself based on information presented earlier together with my own logic and intuition. For example the bit about [paraphrasing] "...if there is a demand for an 'A' and with resources 'R' we can satisfy the demand, we can transform it so that there is now an 'I.O.U(A)' together with the resource 'R' and now there is no longer a demand for 'A'...". And the bit about it going back the other way. Are such statements axioms or logical conclusions (or other).
Second, and to a lesser degree, when it gets down to the very fundamental stuff, I sometimes struggle to understand what I have 'in hand'.
- Truth: Is set 'A' equal in size to set 'B'?
- Me: Sure, I count 3 elements in set 'A' and 3 elements in set 'B'. They're the same size.
- Truth:You can't count them.
- Me: What? Why?
- Truth:Because you don't have numbers.
- Me: Huh?
- Truth:See, it's easy, there's this function 'f' defined 'blah blah blah' that is a bijection between set 'A' and set 'B', so...
- Me: So I have sets and functions, but not numbers?
- Truth:Right.
- Me: Oh.
Even if I didn't completely understand it, I did quite enjoy it. I like the feeling that enlightenment is within reach. Thanks, and looking forward to part 4.
C9 Lectures: Stephan T. Lavavej - Standard Template Library (STL), 9 of n
I am mostly ignorant of C++ (and even more so of 0X), so please forgive me if this makes no sense.
It seems to me that what is accomplished by "std::move" could (and perhaps should) be implied by how the code is written. Cannot the compiler reason that "here is the last place this reference is...referenced, therefore it is safe to use "move" semantics"?
Furthermore, supposing you specify "std::move", could not the compiler issue a strong warning or even an error, should the 'moved' reference be...referenced at a later point?
TWC9: Silverlight 4, SQL Server R2 & Ent Library 5.0 all RTM, Why code comments aren't bad
This comment is in response to your comments on the article about code comments being bad for code clarity. Did you have a chance to read the entire article before the show? I ask because the author does make a comment (admittedly toward the end of the article) about exceptional cases where comments can actually add value.
I think the real problem with comments is that, historically, commenting code was often presented as simply a Good Thing™ to do. Like so many other things, inexperienced programmers tend to accept this advice and apply it in the most obvious (and unhelpful) manner possible.
We need to get the message out there that writing good comments is similar to writing good code in that it takes some effort and usually less is more.
C9 Lectures: Dr. Graham Hutton - Functional Programming Fundamentals Chapter 11 of 13
I agree with the other responders, very excellent, thank you Dr. Hutton.
I have to say, in a way I was disappointed with the fact that program fusion was so effective at improving the performance of the program. One of the nicest properties of Haskell is that its functions are so very composable. And because Haskell is pervasively lazy, a lot of unnecessary computation is avoided. It seems to me that "by hand" program fusion runs somewhat counter to function composition.
I wonder if there would be some way of doing this kind of program fusion at compile-time, based on some function-algebra rules engine. Perhaps this relates to Dr. Huttons research.
E2E2E: Meijer, Rys and Vick - Programming Data
I'm finding the discussion on type systems very interesting and insightful. Once I started to understand Haskell, I realized that many of my ideas about the trade-offs between static and dynamic type systems were misconceptions. As a result, I now find it frustrating...exasperating, really, when people claim dynamic type systems to have certain inherent advantages, which aren't advantages of dynamic types, per se, but rather disadvantages of the most well-known implementations of static typing (C++, Java, C#, etc.).
These thoughts lead me to wonder just what, exactly, *are* the inherent advantages of dynamic type systems. I think Michael Rys's distinction of pessimistic and optimistic systems is the insight I've been seeking. I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes the canonical distinction in the future.
C9 Lectures: Dr. Erik Meijer - Functional Programming Fundamentals Chapter 8 of 13
Excellent as always, Erik.
Perhaps like exoteric, I felt a little dissatisfied with the return type of Parser being "list of..." rather than "Maybe...". I've come to admire the expressive power of Haskell types and this seems like a bit of a hack. Considering, as you pointed out, that both the list and Maybe types comprise Monads, I am wondering where the advantage exists for using the list type. Monads allow for map, filter, lift operations, no?
Ping 36: Zune, Seth MacFarlane, voice recognition, Impatient Optimists
Well, that's ironic. I'm loving my new Zune HD, but I was pretty bummed to find a scratch on it (already!) recently. Not sure how it got there, but I suspect it was one of those times I forgot and tossed it in my pocket along with my keys.
Silverlight support for Chrome and other site updates
Regarding enabling Silverlight for Chrome, THANK YOU! I will be spending a lot more time on C9 now that I don't have to switch over to IE8 to view the video content.


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So I got a chance to stop by the 32nd annual Shell Rotella SuperRigs contest last week, held at the zMAX Dragway outside Concord, NC, which is just a stone's throw away from the Charlotte Motor Speedway. [To view more photos of this annual event, click here, here, and here.]
All sorts of interesting trucks were on display, providing a veritable feast for the eyes of chrome and dazzling paint schemes. [A particular favorite is "The Goose," owned and operated by Daniel and Phyllis Snow. To see photos of this one-of-a-kind highway tractor, just click here.]
Yet no one perhaps seemed surprised that Bill Rethwisch of Tomah, WI, captured "Best of Show" honors with his green and white 2013 Peterbilt 389 (above on the left) this year – the second time in a row one of his magnificent creations claimed top billing at SuperRigs.
First place earned Rethwisch $10,000 from Shell and another $5,000 from Mac Trailer, one of the SuperRig contest sponsors, while he also ended up capturing first place in the "Best Engine" and "Best Interior" categories as well for his green-and-white tanker.
[Ram Trucks is also a sponsor and you can view photos of their display at the 2014 event by clicking here.]
Austin Ashley from Raleigh, MI, won second place in the "Best of Show" category with his purple-and-white 2007 Peterbilt 379 (seen at right), taking home $4,000 from Shell and $3,000 from Mac Trailer. Ashely also won for Best Chrome and Best Theme.
Paul Rissler of California, MO, took home third place in the "Best of Show" group show, winning $2,000 from Shell and $2,000 from MAC Trailer for his 1996 Peterbilt 379.
Perhaps the most amazing thing about SuperRigs is that most of the competition is made up of "working trucks," meaning that when they are not trying to win trophies, their owners have them out of the highways hauling freight in the same rough conditions faced by every other trucker in America.
For some it would seem crazy to put such works of art through such tough work, but for their owners, it's just part of life in the trucking world. Hats off to them all.


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The High Line's planting design is inspired by the self-seeded landscape that grew up between rail tracks after the trains stopped running in the 1980s. Today, the High Line includes more than 300 species of perennials, grasses, shrubs, and trees — chosen for their hardiness, adaptability, diversity, and seasonal variation in color and texture. Some of the species that originally grew on the High Line's rail bed are reflected in the park landscape today.
This week we share with you one of our gardeners' current favorites.
Allium is a genus of flowering plants commonly referred to as the onion genus. This group includes many common edibles that you might recognize, such as garlic, leeks, onions, chives, shallots, and ramps. All of these plants feature high concentrations of sulfur compounds which give them their distinctive taste, smell, and occasionally tear-inducing qualities. In this same genus are a number of ornamentals known for their architectural build and large spherical compound flower heads.
Sicilian honey garlic, Allium siculum subspecies dioscoridis, is one of the distinctive alliums you'll find currently on view at the High Line. Atop a long stalk, you'll find a head of tiny bell-like flowers of pink, white, and green.
Sicilian honey garlic is native to the Mediterranean, growing most commonly in damp and shady wooded areas. While it's most common modern-day use is as a garden ornamental, it is also said to be used as a seasoning in Bulgaria.
Between Gansevoort and Little West 12th Streets


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Why Is Louie Such a Remarkable TV Show? Because It Makes Stand-up Comedy Cinematic
It's not necessarily the content that amazes, but rather the form, which is revolutionary.
Why is Louie such a remarkable show? I don't think it's the content, which is alternately funny, sweet, and mortifying, sometimes all three. It's the form, which is revolutionary.
TV history is filled with sitcoms driven by stand-up comics who have creative control, but without exception, they've all chosen a particular format and tone, and more or less stuck with them over the long haul. The Bob Newhart Show, The Cosby Show, and Everybody Loves Raymond, to name three durable sitcoms, were pretty much the same at the end as they were at the start. Others — such as Roseanne and Seinfeld — evolved, becoming faster or slower, or more or less farcical, but without losing touch with their essence. You might look, for example, at a late-season Seinfeld episode and think, This feels different than season two or three or I liked the show better when it was slower and subtler, but there's virtually no chance that you'd think, This feels like the same actors in a different show.
Louie is an altogether different animal. It's not enough to say that it takes its cues from the short story or anthology show or personal blog, though all three assertions are true. Saying the series takes place inside the mind of creator-star Louis C.K. doesn't help, either, because it's self-evident. In some sense, every creative work takes place inside the mind of whoever drives it. That's why a work can be said to have a personality, a worldview — and in works that are perhaps more figurative than "realistic," this comes through most strongly. You know when you're watching How I Met Your Mother or Californication or Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 or Curb Your Enthusiasm that you aren't seeing reality, but somebody's subjectively warped version of reality. All comedy, indeed all art, is subjective. What sitcom isn't a projection of the inside of someone's mind?
No, Louie is unique for one reason, and it has to do with the execution of a vision — i.e., with style. The show makes stand-up comedy cinematic. That's a specific skill set that I don't think any other sitcom has demonstrated before — certainly not on this scale, and with this level of confidence and control. And it could not have happened without Louis C.K., who is as assured a filmmaker as he is a comedian.
C.K., who writes, directs, stars in, and often edits each episode of Louie, has figured out how to translate the imaginative impact of stand-up into a visual medium. Most episodes start with Louie performing onstage, and then the episode segues into the cinematic portion of the episode, with fictional characters speaking scripted lines. But you're still watching a stand-up routine. The scripted portions are the continuation of stand-up by other means.
The segmented nature of the series — disconnected tales, anecdotes, moments, and reveries, some of them just a few minutes long — evokes the stop-and-start rhythms of a stand-up routine, an art form in which it's perfectly acceptable to pivot from one subject to the next with a blunt transition: "Women." "Football fans are the worst." "Now I'm gonna talk about things that you can do to keep people on their toes." He's talking to you directly, in the way that a stand-up comic would talk to you from the stage at a club, but he's doing it through the language of film — a translation that's not as simple as it sounds, given that stand-up is pure performance, just words and gestures. Theater.
The results are hit and miss, just as stand-up routines are hit and miss, because at heart, it's all an extended riff. Sometimes he's reflecting on ethics or politics or teaching a moral lesson. Sometimes he's telling you about a dream or fantasy he had, or an encounter that became fodder for a fantasy: See season two's "Subway," for instance, a short piece that starts with Louie encountering a homeless man washing himself on a subway platform and ends with Louie fantasizing himself as a hero to subway riders, doffing his shirt to mop up a mysterious spill on a seat. Other times the star-filmmaker is mining experiences from his own life (or experiences so raw that they might as well have actually happened to him) to get at basic truths about friendship and romance. An example is season two's "Pamela," wherein Louie made a heartrending confession of love to his female friend and was gently rebuffed.
That "Pamela" was contained in the same half-hour block as "Subway" illustrates what I'm getting at. We never trouble ourselves with consistency when a stand-up segues from describing a dream and the event that inspired it to telling us a more subdued, melancholy, everyday story about the time that he decided to confess his love to a female friend. No sitcom has dared to hold such dissimilar modes within the same episode before, but here's Louie doing it whenever it feels the urge, and doing it so proficiently that the pieces fit together more easily than you might expect.
Such extreme juxtapositions happen over the course of whole seasons as well. Season three started out with a series of personal, professional, and even sexual humiliations for Louie — some hugely exaggerated, even ridiculous, such as the bit where Louie's car gets gratuitously destroyed, and others wry and "realistic," such as the episode in which Louis develops a man-crush on a hotel employee in Miami — and then built to a surprisingly intense dramatic peak in episodes four and five, which starred Parker Posey as a dark free spirit who forced Louie to confront his depression and suicidal urges. Soon after that, Louie aired a segment in which the hero had to babysit a horrible brat who only eats raw meat, pushes baby carriages into traffic, hurls rugs from apartment windows, and evacuates his bowels in the bathtub, just because.
Neither the boy nor his even more loathsome mother were "realistic"; they were the sorts of absurd caricatures who would appear in a stand-up routine by a comic who had just been through a rotten experience and needed to vent. Yet this story — as well as last week's "Dad," which climaxed with Louie racing through Boston on foot and on a stolen motorcycle and speedboat — all existed within the same fictional framework, one in which anything is possible.
The only transitions between these stories are the commercial breaks between acts, or the seven days separating one full episode from another. This temporal black space is the equivalent of a stand-up saying, "Can we talk about Obama for a second?" or "It is so friggin' hot right now!" Every such transition means the same thing: "Now I'm going to talk about something else, and hopefully I'll be interesting enough that you'll keep listening and not heckle me." Richard Pryor could do routines in which his dog or his pipe talked to him, then ramp down into more personal stories. Eddie Murphy could do a filthy routine about Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton as gay lovers and a childhood reverie about kids and ice cream within the same performance. George Carlin could mix wordplay, social satire, religious and political commentary, personal memories, and even an extended fantasy about the destruction of the world and somehow make it all seem to fit. And if you didn't like one or another of these bits, all you had to do was wait a few minutes, and the comic would be on to something else.
There is, of course, a sense in which the amazing freedom Louis C.K. enjoys could also be construed as a cop-out. If there is no established tone to the series — if indeed it is all a subjective projection of the interior of one comic's mind — then it becomes harder to complain that Louis C.K. is painting himself as too much of a sad sack to gain sympathy, or that some of the portrayals of female sexuality have a touch of angry white guy misogyny, or that a lot of the episodes just flat-out don't work (all of which I've heard from other viewers, and in some cases argued myself). The easiest response to this is: "It's all happening in Louie's mind; it's just one guy's perception of reality; it's not meant to be real." Is that necessarily a valid response, though? Might Louie be a greater series if it weren't such a grab bag — if the creator decided to stick with one mode or tone for a while longer and develop his character and other characters more meticulously, instead of jumping to another thing as a stand-up comic might?
Maybe, but what's on-screen is so original, and so consistently impressive even when particular episodes just don't do it for you, that it seems churlish to try to imagine a different Louie. The one we've got is consistently fascinating and aesthetically revolutionary (for American television). And viewer response to whatever C.K. does can be as entertaining and enlightening as the episode themselves; to declare allegiance to one episode or segment over another is to admit who you are and what you find funny and interesting. A couple days ago, I raved about last week's episode on Twitter — the surreal "Dad" — and somebody wrote back to say he thought it stunk, and that it was warmed-over Woody Allen. He countered with a list of episodes he thought were superior, and they were episodes I didn't like nearly as well as "Dad." A fellow TV critic told me today that he thought tonight's episode, which he previewed, was "the first real disappointment of the season." That probably means I'll love it.


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One of the dating services for meeting local people is Honeywood speed dating. Based on a series of short planned introductions Honeywood speed dating allow singles to quickly meet people face to face in a safe and fun environment. Imagine meeting people online in a similar fashion through matchmaker.com'sinnovative new Cupid feature which emails you introductions of singles in the Honeywood speed dating area without ever having to leave your home.
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Meet people from all different backgrounds and lifestyles around the world or someone in the local Honeywood neighborhood at matchmaker.com. There are thousands of singles from the around the world looking for a long term relationship. Find love and romance with a Honeywood speed dating style of matchmaking.


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Artists In The US Want To Get Paid Multiple Times For A Single Work
from the not-this-again dept
This may sound appealing, but it leaves out the much bigger picture. First, this punishes those who invest in young artists by making it more expensive and more difficult to ever resell their artwork. This also means that people will buy less artwork as an investment, because you've automatically cut out a significant chunk of any profit. Limiting the market for a new artist is not a way to help that artist. As for the story of the "poor artist" who gets cut out of the appreciation of his own work... that's also hogwash. Sure they may sell early pieces for less, but the fame does not preclude them from making new works, and charging appropriately for them based on their fame (some of which may have come about because of the risk that early buyers/supporters/patrons took).
Can you imagine if this expanded to other areas? What if you had to pay back the furniture builder when you sold your old sofa? Or the home developer when you sold your house (oops, someone's trying that, too).
The whole thing is a bizarre and counterproductive concept. In past years, we've seen both the UK and Australia look to set up resale rights. Australia eventually put in place a watered down version, which isn't quite as bad, but still has problems.
Anyway, after not hearing a peep about such an idea in the US in years... it appears that there's a new lobbying campaign for a resale right in the US. Of course, it's being pushed for by the Artists Rights' Society, the main copyright licensing agency for artists in the US. Realizing that art galleries have freaked out about this in the past, ARS is trying to get this approved by exempting art galleries from this, not realizing how much worse that actually makes this for artists and for individual patrons of the arts. Now galleries have a favored position regarding terms and individual patrons have to pay an extra tax.
It appears that ARS has hired Bruce Lehman to be the main lobbyist on this issue. Does that name ring a bell? Lehman is the guy who constructed the DMCA. A few years back, Lehman admitted that the DMCA had been a disaster and said that we'd be better off entering a "post-copyright era." Of course, he didn't take the blame himself, but rather blamed the recording industry execs for failing to get digital. He also seemed to think that the DMCA's overreach was a huge surprise, despite the fact that many, many critics brought it up at the time Lehman was pushing it -- and Lehman's response at the time was to threaten to "rip [the] throat out" of James Boyle, who had warned of problems of the DMCA. Lehman also sought to get Boyle denied tenure at the university he was teaching at for pointing out why the DMCA was a bad idea.
Given that history, I'm at a loss as to why he should be trusted when it comes to any form of new copyright-related policy.


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London Olympics 2012
MTV Music Awards
London Paralympics 2012
Rolling Stones
Holiday on Ice
Sensation White
> > At Airworks we design and build inflatables that don't actually look like inflatables. Our skills
in constructing inflatable sculptures allow set designers, theatre producers and party organisers
the freedom to imagine just about anything, knowing that we can create it. We're always looking
to new ways of making our work more advanced, impactful, beautiful, through new technologies
and techniques. Our pride in making the best of the best, means we often take on big and
challenging assignments that would scare off others. In fact, it's in our blood to take on the
sort of projects that others would say were impossible.
All our air sculptures are created by our dedicated and skilled team in our Amsterdam studio.
And we all share the 'there's got to be a better way' mentality. We run projects from start to
finish; from first idea to last minute logistics, whenever or wherever our public wants it. What's
more, our inflatables belong to a rare breed within the decor industry; they travel light, store
easily and are reusable. Air works !


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The Florida Program for Shark Research (FPSR), directed by Dr. Gavin Naylor and staffed by a team of research scientists and educators, includes the International Shark Attack File (ISAF) and the International Sawfish Encounter Database (ISED) and hosts the preeminent website focusing on shark research, fishery management and conservation.
The ISAF, a compendium of scientific investigations of all known shark attacks on humans, is maintained at the Florida Museum of Natural History and is operated in cooperation with the American Elasmobranch Society (AES), the international scientific organization of researchers studying sharks and their relatives.
The ISED documents all known encounters with the federally endangered smalltooth sawfish (Pristis pectinata) and the equally threatened largetooth sawfish (P. perotetti). The ISED integrates data formerly held by Mote Marine Laboratory, two data sets from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, a pair of data sets databases from private sawfish aficionados, plus the FLMNH's own data. As a result, all existing information regarding U.S. sawfish are now held in one place. The website is one of the largest and most frequently accessed elasmobranch site on the Web and provides educational material about sharks and their kin, as well as serving as the host site for the National Shark Research Consortium (of which the FPSR is one of four members), ISAF, ISED, and the Smalltooth Sawfish Implementation Team.
The FPSR staff is involved in a plethora of research initiatives, both national and international. The primary objectives of projects conducted by FLMNH through the Florida Program for Shark Research include:
- Conduct studies on the relative abundance and distribution of sharks.
- Produce basic and applied studies on the biology, ecology and behavior of coastal and pelagic elasmobranchs.
- Actively engage in promoting the goals of international elasmobranch conservation.
- Conduct studies on the systematics, zoogeography and evolutionary relationships of sharks.
- Investigate, compile and synthesize information on shark attack.
- Provide educational and technical training of students and raise public awareness about elasmobranchs through dispensation of advisory information and educational materials.
The FPSR is a major research and education program that integrates cutting-edge research with education and outreach, reaching a worldwide audience.


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Christian Winterfieldt - Lukas, Vienna
Christian Winterfieldt - Lukas, Vienna
C-Type print on A3 matte photo paper
Edition of 50
Please note border sizes vary due to differences in film and digital format. If you select the first option we will print the image as close to A3 as possible but there may be a small white border. The second option offers an A4 image on an A3 sheet, meaning the print will have a larger white border, which can be useful when framing.
Add To Cart


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Double Heart with Doves Inlaid Italian Music Box
This is an Exquisite Hand Crafted Burled Wood Musical box made from unique rare woods handcrafted in Italy.Each model is individually assembled for you personally, with your choice of song and bears the quality and clarity of a first class music box.The box is a beautiful Burled Walnut with burgandy interior and also includes a tassled key.A wonderful heirloom to pass down through your family generations. What a wonderful gift this would make for that special someone or for a collector of beautiful boxes.Plays ''Memories''' $265.00 oAppox.5'' x 6 3/4''Strictly no returns or refunds on Customizes items. Any items damaged in shipping will be replaced.


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MTV VMAs was a shocking event, for the wrong reasons
| Portions are © Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or distributed.
KHGI Nebraska TV is the ABC affiliate station for Central and South-western Nebraska, providing news, weather, sports and local event coverage to residents throughout the area including: Kearney, Grand Island, Hastings, North Platte, Lexington, Holdrege, McCook, York, Alda, Aurora and Broken Bow.


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The last time Seattle magazine spoke with Drew Christie, local animator/illustrator and one of our 2010 Spotlight Award Winners, he was screening a short film at Northwest Film Forum's Local Sightings Film Festival in Seattle – and fantasizing about doing the "most time-consuming kind of animation…maybe scrimshaw or embroidery animation."
He still hasn't accomplished the latter. "And for that I am bummed," he says in perfect deadpan pitch.
On the other hand, the 27 year-old just screened one of his animated short films at Sundance Film Festival, America's most influential indie film fest.
"Song of the Spindle" is a funny, charming short film about a dialogue between a man who looks a lot like Christie and an insightful whale that makes a case for how music can save the world (and that whales are smarter than humans).
The inspiration for the film came to Christie when he heard a story on the radio about a neuron that both whales and humans have in their brains. Called the spindle, this tiny neuron is responsible for compassion, understanding and the ability to understand music.
The film was well received at Sundance; PBS is interested in possibly licensing the film for TV and Christie is fielding inquiries from film festivals around the world, including Madeira Film Festival, located on the Portuguese island off the coast of Africa. He's also been invited to Mountainfilm in Telluride (Colorado), the Ashland Film Festival (Oregon), and the Nantucket Film festival ("I'll probably go to that one," he says, "I always wanted to go to Nantucket Whaling Museum.")
His drawings and films take a lot of inspiration from quirky figures and events in American history, particularly in the 19th century. Miners, ne'er-do-wells and animals seem to be his favorite subjects and they come alive in his sardonic drawings and films. Part flip book, part shadow puppet theater, and part comic books, Drew Christie's animations are what happens when a fresh imagination looks into the past.
He's currently working on a book of drawings of antique instruments, and also an animated short told from the perspective of a nutria living in Lake Washington. He lives in Cherry Hill in Seattle. "I'm not sure if that counts as a neighborhood," he says. "But it's the name of the newsletter I get."
Also of interest: Christie recently launched a new art subscription series called The Drew Quarterly. For $45 a year (a bargain!), you'll get four different Drew Christie creations mailed to you throughout the year. Each work will be a surprise: it could be a drawing, a magazine, a DVD, or some surprise he hasn't yet thought up.
Follow his work at his new website www.drewchristie.com
Watch "Song of the Spindle" here:


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IEnumerator Interface
The .NET API Reference documentation has a new home. Visit the .NET API Browser on docs.microsoft.com to see the new experience.
Supports a simple iteration over a non-generic collection.
Assembly: mscorlib (in mscorlib.dll)
Gets the element in the collection at the current position of the enumerator.
Advances the enumerator to the next element of the collection.
Sets the enumerator to its initial position, which is before the first element in the collection.
IEnumerator is the base interface for all non-generic enumerators.
For the generic version of this interface see IEnumerator<T>.
The foreach statement of the C# language (for each in Visual Basic) hides the complexity of the enumerators. Therefore, using foreach is recommended instead of directly manipulating the enumerator.
Enumerators can be used to read the data in the collection, but they cannot be used to modify the underlying collection.
The Reset method is provided for COM interoperability and does not need to be fully implemented; instead, the implementer can throw a NotSupportedException.
Initially, the enumerator is positioned before the first element in the collection. You must call the MoveNext method to advance the enumerator to the first element of the collection before reading the value of Current; otherwise, Current is undefined.
Current returns the same object until either MoveNext or Reset is called. MoveNext sets Current to the next element.
If MoveNext passes the end of the collection, the enumerator is positioned after the last element in the collection and MoveNext returns false. When the enumerator is at this position, subsequent calls to MoveNext also return false. If the last call to MoveNext returned false, calling Current throws an exception.
To set Current to the first element of the collection again, you can call Reset, if it's implemented, followed by MoveNext. If Reset is not implemented, you must create a new enumerator instance to return to the first element of the collection.
An enumerator remains valid as long as the collection remains unchanged. If changes are made to the collection, such as adding, modifying, or deleting elements, the enumerator is irrecoverably invalidated and the next call to MoveNext or Reset throws an InvalidOperationException. If the collection is modified between MoveNext and Current, Current returns the element that it is set to, even if the enumerator is already invalidated.
The enumerator does not have exclusive access to the collection; therefore, enumerating through a collection is intrinsically not a thread-safe procedure. Even when a collection is synchronized, other threads can still modify the collection, which causes the enumerator to throw an exception. To guarantee thread safety during enumeration, you can either lock the collection during the entire enumeration or catch the exceptions resulting from changes made by other threads.
The following code example demonstrates the implementation of the IEnumerable and IEnumerator interfaces for a custom collection. In this example, members of these interfaces are not explicitly called, but they are implemented to support the use of foreach (for each in Visual Basic) to iterate through the collection.
using System; using System.Collections; // Simple business object. public class Person { public Person(string fName, string lName) { this.firstName = fName; this.lastName = lName; } public string firstName; public string lastName; } // Collection of Person objects. This class // implements IEnumerable so that it can be used // with ForEach syntax. public class People : IEnumerable { private Person[] _people; public People(Person[] pArray) { _people = new Person[pArray.Length]; for (int i = 0; i < pArray.Length; i++) { _people[i] = pArray[i]; } } // Implementation for the GetEnumerator method. IEnumerator IEnumerable.GetEnumerator() { return (IEnumerator) GetEnumerator(); } public PeopleEnum GetEnumerator() { return new PeopleEnum(_people); } } // When you implement IEnumerable, you must also implement IEnumerator. public class PeopleEnum : IEnumerator { public Person[] _people; // Enumerators are positioned before the first element // until the first MoveNext() call. int position = -1; public PeopleEnum(Person[] list) { _people = list; } public bool MoveNext() { position++; return (position < _people.Length); } public void Reset() { position = -1; } object IEnumerator.Current { get { return Current; } } public Person Current { get { try { return _people[position]; } catch (IndexOutOfRangeException) { throw new InvalidOperationException(); } } } } class App { static void Main() { Person[] peopleArray = new Person[3] { new Person("John", "Smith"), new Person("Jim", "Johnson"), new Person("Sue", "Rabon"), }; People peopleList = new People(peopleArray); foreach (Person p in peopleList) Console.WriteLine(p.firstName + " " + p.lastName); } } /* This code produces output similar to the following: * * John Smith * Jim Johnson * Sue Rabon * */
Available since 8
.NET Framework
Available since 1.1
Portable Class Library
Supported in: portable .NET platforms
Available since 2.0
Windows Phone Silverlight
Available since 7.0
Windows Phone
Available since 8.1


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While the scope and reach of the new and improved Windows Live services that Microsoft plans to ship over the next few months is somewhat daunting, understanding the Windows Live applications coming as part of Wave 3 is far more manageable. While there are a few exceptions, virtually all of the native Windows applications that Microsoft ships under the Windows Live umbrella come as part of Windows Live Essentials. This application suite debuted a year ago, and the Wave 3 version shipped in a beta version a few months ago. By the first week of December, you can expect to see a near-final version of Windows Live Essentials Wave 3 ship. And this version of the suite, amazingly, will deliver even more new functionality. Yep, it's an exciting time to be a Windows Live user.
For an overview of the applications and features that Microsoft debuted in the beta version of Windows Live Essentials, please refer to my earlier article, A Look at the Windows Live Wave 3 Applications. This article will focus only on the changes that will first appear in the near-final release candidate version of the suite that will be available soon. This update will appear as the third of five phases that make up the Wave 3 release schedule. Phase 1 included the Essentials beta release. Phase 2 was the initial release of Windows Live Hotmail Wave 3. Phase 4 is the second Hotmail update, which includes universal POP access to the service, and the final release of Windows Live Calendar. And phase 5 is the final phase, with Hotmail gaining POP3 aggregation functionality and unlimited storage, and the Essentials suite being finalized.
Windows Live Mail
What it is: Email, contacts, calendar, RSS feed, and USENET newsgroups management
Key competition: Mozilla Thunderbird, Web mail solutions
Key integration points: Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live People, Windows Live Calendar
Overview: Windows Live Mail is the successor to Outlook Express (Windows XP) and Windows Mail (Vista), and if you're still using either one of those sorry excuses for an email application, you should upgrade immediately to Windows Live Mail instead. Like its predecessors, Windows Live Mail supports multiple email accounts (including Hotmail-style Web mail accounts), USENET newsgroups, and contacts management. But unlike its predecessors, Windows Live Mail is a high quality application, and it bundles a slew of additional functionality, not the least of which is its Calendar component, which is compatible with the new Windows Live Calendar service.
Secret: I can now confirm that Microsoft will not be updating Windows Calendar in Windows 7, so Windows Live Mail's Calendar module replaces that application going forward as well.
New in Wave 3 RC: Windows Live Mail will integrate with the Windows Live People service, providing you with offline access to your entire contacts list. Windows Live Calendar will be finalized, and the Calendar component in Windows Live Mail will be the perfect offline counterpart to that service. Likewise, users who take advantage of the POP3 aggregation feature in Windows Live Hotmail will be able to send and receive mail from all of those accounts via Windows Live Mail as well.
The calendar component in Windows Live Mail will replace Windows Calendar going forward.
Windows Live Messenger
What it is: Microsoft's consumer-oriented instant messaging (IM) application
Key competition: AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk
Key integration points: Windows Live Profile (What's New Feed), Windows Live People, Windows Live Hotmail
Overview: Windows Live Messenger is the successor to Windows Messenger (Windows XP) and MSN Messenger. It is the most popular instant messaging (IM) application on earth and one of the centerpieces of Windows Live Essentials and services integration.
New in Wave 3 RC: The Wave 3 version of Windows Live Messenger is the most extensive update yet of Microsoft's popular IM client, and it is being refined to form the Windows-based hub for the social features in Windows Live. Windows Live Messenger will integrate with the Favorites and Groups features in Windows Live People. The biggest change, however, is the What's New feed, which in RC will work with the new consolidated What's New feed that's available across all of your Windows Live and third party services.
The What's New display in Messenger integrates with your wider Windows Live What's New feed.
Windows Live Movie Maker Beta
What it is: A video editing application, including movie versions of photo slideshows
Key competition: Windows Movie Maker (XP, Vista)
Key integration points: Windows Live Photo Gallery, MSN Soapbox, Windows DVD Maker
Overview: Windows Live Movie Maker is a simplified successor to the Windows Movie Maker applications from Windows XP and Vista that is more oriented towards creating videos that you will share on the Web via services such as You Tube and MSN Soapbox.
New in Wave 3 RC: Windows Live Movie Maker will still be in beta form when the other Essentials application hit the release candidate phase and Microsoft says that this one application will remain in beta when the others are finalized. Unlike the broken version in the Essentials beta, we will finally get a usable version of Windows Live Movie Maker Beta in the RC version of the suite. This will include various editing features, effects, transitions, and themes, as well as numerous ways to share the movies you create via the Internet, optical discs, or your TV, cell phone, or portable video device. Windows Live Movie Maker Beta will also support a new plug-in model, similar to other Windows Live applications, so that third parties can provide other capabilities and format/codec support.
Windows Live Movie Maker Beta retains most of the functionality of its predecessors and adds a few unique features of its own.
Windows Live Photo Gallery
What it is: A photo and home movie management solution
Key competition: Google Picasa, Web services such as Flickr
Key integration points: Windows Live Photos, Windows Live Movie Maker, Windows DVD Maker, third party services such as Flickr, Google Picasa Web Galleries, and others
Overview: Windows Live Photo Gallery is the successor to and a vastly improved version of the Windows Photo Gallery application that debuted in Windows Vista. It includes all of the photo management and editing functionality you'd expect, and can manage short videos taken with digital cameras as well. The Wave 3 version adds a ton of new features, including face detection, animated slide shows, enhanced third party photo service compatibility, new editing options (including panoramic photo creation), and photo printing services integration.
New in Wave 3 RC: In release candidate form, Windows Live Photo Gallery will integrate strongly with two Windows Live services, Windows Live Photos (naturally), and Windows Live Sync, the latter of which can be configured to automatically sync your entire photo library between all of your PCs. A wide number of third party services will also integrate with Windows Live Photo Gallery, so if you don't use Windows Live for online photo sharing, you'll be able to use this application with the service you prefer instead. Windows Live Photo Gallery's people tagging feature is compatible with the similar feature on Windows Live Photos. Windows Live Photo Gallery will work with over 71,000 print services partners worldwide.
The People Tagging feature in Windows Live Photo Gallery carries through to Windows Live Photos as well.
Windows Live Toolbar
What it is: An Internet Explorer (IE) toolbar that provides quick access to key Windows Live services
Key competition: Google and Yahoo! browser toolbars
Key integration points: Windows Live Search, Windows Live Profile, Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Photos, Windows Live Calendar, MSN, Windows Live Local Search, MSNBC News, Windows Live Translate, and other Microsoft and third party services
Overview: Browser toolbars are aimed at users who spend most of their time online on a single service such as Yahoo!, Google, MSN, or Windows Live. Frankly, the Windows Live toolbar is the weakest of the Essentials solutions, and the least necessary. This is the one part of Windows Live Essentials that isn't a true standalone application.
New in Wave 3 RC: Windows Live Toolbar will work with all of the applicable Wave 3 services that are shipping in December.
Windows Live Toolbar is compatible with the new Wave 3 Live services.
Windows Live Writer
What it is: A WYSIWYG blog editor, compatible with dozens of different types of blogs
Key competition: n/a
Key integration points: Windows Live Spaces
Overview: Windows Live Writer may not seem like an interesting application but it is the most welcome surprise in the Essentials. Sure, it works just fine with Windows Live Spaces, as expected. But it also works amazingly well with a host of other blog providers, and it makes adding photos, videos, and other content into a blog a seamless affair.
New in Wave 3 RC: Most of the new functionality in Windows Live Writer has already shipped in various pre-RC releases, but with the release candidate, Microsoft is dramatically changing Windows Live Spaces to be more blog- and personal Web site-centric. The big deal in this release is that you should rarely need to leave the application when you're preparing a blog post or other Web site update: Everything you need to write, and add rich content like photos, photo slideshows, and video, is available from directly in Windows Live Writer.
It's easy to add photos, photo slideshows, and videos to blogs without hand editing code in Windows Live Writer.
Windows Live Family Safety
What it is: A parental controls service for family members
Key competition: n/a
Key integration points: Windows Live Hotmail, Windows Live Spaces, Windows Live People, Windows Live Profile, Windows Live Messenger, Internet Explorer
Overview: An extension of the parental controls functionality in Windows Vista and 7, Windows Live Family Safety provides parents with the tools they need to protect their kids online. One complication: To work properly, everyone in the family must have their own Windows Live ID.
New in Wave 3 RC: Windows Live Family Safety RC will be compatible with all of the relevant Wave 3 services that ship in December.
Windows Live Family Safety provides parental control functionality for families.
Final thoughts
While most of what's happening in the Wave 3 version of the Windows Live Essentials suite is already well-known, I hope a few of these revelations have surprised you. I'd point to the theme support in Windows Live Movie Maker, which simplifies the process of creating a professional-looking movie you won't be embarrassed share online. The What's New feed in Windows Live Messenger, which is annoying in the beta release but will be suddenly useful and desirable in RC form. And the appearance of calendaring in Windows Live Mail, which, in concert with Windows Live Calendar, will ultimately replace the Windows Calendar application from Windows Vista. Windows Live Essentials is so good, it's the first thing I install after getting Windows up and running. I can't wait to play with the final release of the Wave 3 version. It's shaping up nicely.


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Mina Victory Home For The Holiday Beaded Snowman Multicolor Throw Pillow
by Mina Victory | Item #: 980054290 |
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About this item
Cozy up for the holidays with this stylish and decorative throw pillow. Complete the look with Mina Victory's new holiday collection of resplendent home accent pieces made from the finest materials. These gorgeous creations will bring cheer and elegance to your living spaces.
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|Laguna Niguel, Calif.
|High School:
|Dana Hills HS
2003: Alex Richey returns for her senior season and if she can remain healthy, she should be a contributor at the forward position...2002: Suffered borderline stress fractures in both legs and that limited her availability in 2002...Richey played in just nine matches as a junior, starting one...She did not score a goal, but did assist on one...Attempted two shots...2001: Played in 16 matches as a sophomore, starting seven...Scored one goal on the season...Richey's lone goal came in a 3-1 victory at San Jose State...Attempted 11 shots on the year...2000: Richey played in 14 matches as a freshman, starting eight...As a freshman, she led the Gauchos in goals scored with four and in points with eight...She scored three of her four goals in the last three matches of the season, including a two-goal performance in a road win at Cal State Fullerton...Also scored the game-winning goal in a 2-1 Big West victory over UC Irvine...Tallied her another game-winning goal in a 3-2 win at Sacramento State...Her eight four goals came on just eight shots.
Club/High School
Played with the Southern California Blues for six years...Twice a member of her ODP District Team and once a member of the prestigious ODP State Team...Richey prepped at Dana Hills High School...Started as either a forward or as a midfielder in all four of her seasons of high school soccer...Team captain...Coached by Cindy Snow...Also ran cross country and track in high school.
Born October 4, 1981 in Mission Viejo, CA...Majoring in Sociology... Has been recognized by GOAL Magazine as an "Athlete of the Week"...Played under former UCSB women's coach Tad Bobak and former player Lisa Busch as a member of the Blues...Also recruited by Long Beach State, Cal State Fullerton, Wyoming, UC Irvine, Utah and St. Mary's...Daughter of David and Diane Richey.


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911 call sheds new light on December slaying
911 call sheds new light on December slaying
LOUISVILLE, Ky. —
The release of a frantic 911 call provides more details about a Louisville killing.
Caller: He was shot in his stomach.
911 Operator: Is he awake and breathing?
Caller: No. No.
Investigators said Jerard Garrett shot and killed Jamie Young at Young's home on the 2300 block of Dumesnil Street four days after Christmas.
Homicide detectives said Billy Richardson served as the driver in the drug deal that turned fatal.
Police found drugs and cash inside the home and, according to court documents, Garrett was overheard asking Young, "Where's the rest of it."
The two men were arrested in Detroit by U.S. marshals.
They've also been indicted in connection with the death of Kenneth Forbes Jr. in Shively, six days before Young was shot.


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By Marice Richter and Jim Forsyth
DALLAS (Reuters) - The suspect accused of shooting dead former Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle and another man stole a vehicle from the scene and told his sister "I traded my soul for a new truck," investigators said on Tuesday.
Eddie Ray Routh is being held on one count of capital murder and two counts of murder in the slayings on Saturday of Kyle and Chad Littlefield.
Investigators said that shortly after the shooting Routh visited his sister, Laura Blevins, who said on a 911 emergency call released on Tuesday that the visit left her scared.
"Listen, my brother just came by here and told me he committed a murder," Blevins said in a call released by police in Midlothian, Texas. "I'm terrified for my life because I don't know if he is going to come back here."
Blevins, who could be heard herding others into a car to go to the police department, said she didn't know if her brother was telling the truth.
"He's all crazy, he's ... psychotic," she said. "I don't know if he's on drugs or not. My husband is going to talk to you because I'm so nervous."
The husband, who was not identified on the recording, said on the call that Routh, an Iraq war veteran, had recently been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
"He got out of a mental hospital last week," Blevins' husband said of Routh. The call ended when the couple reached the police department.
Routh, 25, of Lancaster, Texas, served in the Marines from 2006 to 2010, including a tour in Iraq, and that fact has put attention on the psychological wounds of war. The new evidence about the truck, which first came to light on Monday, suggests robbery could have formed part of the motive.
Kyle, author of the book "American Sniper," was credited with more than 150 killings as a sniper for U.S. forces in Iraq and had been working with military veterans recovering from physical and emotional injuries, sometimes inviting them to the shooting range.
Randy Fowler, an investigator with the Erath County Sheriff's Department in Texas, wrote in the affidavit that Routh drove to his sister's home in Midlothian, about 50 miles from the gun range where the shooting took place, shortly after the incident.
Routh was driving what his sister described as a "big dark or black Ford F-250 pickup that she had never seen before," Fowler said in the affidavit.
"It substantiated Routh's claim that he had murdered Chris Kyle and his friend, and he told the Blevinses that he had killed Kyle and that he had 'traded his soul for a new truck,'" Fowler wrote.
Routh was later arrested at his home in Lancaster, Texas, south of Dallas, after leading officials on a brief police chase while he was at the wheel of the truck, which has been identified as the one that Kyle, Routh, and Kyle's friend Littlefield drove to the shooting range earlier that day.
Two employees of the Rough Creek Lodge shooting range "found Chris and Chad lying on the ground covered in blood" about 1-1/2 hours after the trio arrived at the site, the affidavit said.
Routh's sister advised her brother to turn himself in, but Routh said he wanted to get to Oklahoma to avoid Texas authorities, the affidavit said.
Twice in recent months Routh was taken to a mental hospital after behaving erratically, according to police reports from Dallas and Lancaster.
Dallas television station KTVT reported that Lancaster police took Routh to a mental hospital in September after family members told officers he was threatening to kill himself during an argument with his father.
KTVT quoted Routh's relatives saying they believed he was a victim of the government's inability to provide the mental health treatment he needed for the emotional problems he suffered in combat.
Authorities have not said Routh specifically suffered from post-traumatic stress, a severe anxiety disorder caused by witnessing or participating in traumatic events, but the killings renewed the focus on PTSD among veterans.
About 30 percent of returning Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans suffered from some form of post-traumatic stress, the Department of Veterans Affairs estimated in a report released last year.
Kyle, who served four combat tours of duty in Iraq, won two Silver Stars and five Bronze Stars for bravery, according to his book, which covers his military service from 1999 to 2009.
(Editing by Daniel Trotta, Edith Honan and Eric Beech)


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The Cedar Key Scrub State Reserve and Cedar Key Museum State Park will host a National Stars-n-Parks Programs Feb. 4-8 as part of Cedar Key's Annual Stargazing Party.
During the event amateur astronomers come to town equipped with high-powered telescopes for a week-long stargazing event.
Cedar Key is one of the few places in the nation with skies dark enough to host such an event. This is a Public Education Astronomy Program given by volunteers. Activities are designed to stimulate interest in astronomy and to educate the public about advantages of protecting the night sky from light pollution.
The Department of Environmental Protection's state parks events will include:
• Public Stargazing and Slide Shows at Cedar Key Museum State Park, 12231 S.W. 166 Court, Cedar Key, on Monday, Feb. 4 and Friday, Feb. 8, at 7 p.m. The astronomers will start the slide show at 7 p.m. with the stargazing to follow. Light refreshments will be served. There is no charge for this event.
• Stargazing Hayride at Cedar Key Scrub State Reserve, Wednesday, Feb. 6, at 6:45 and 8 p.m. A park ranger and an astronomer will provide a guided hayride through Cedar Key Scrub State Reserve for a nighttime glimpse of this natural area, including binocular stargazing and interpretation.
Reservations are required and space is limited. This event is free.
The hayrides will depart from the Cedar Key Scrub picnic area on State Road 24, five miles east of Cedar Key. In the event of inclement weather, the ride may be rescheduled for Thursday, Feb. 7.
For more information and to make reservations, call 352-543-5567. If you require assistance in order to participate in this event, please inform park staff when making reservations.
For more information, visit www.floridastateparks.org.
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Rams hold Senior Night
JOHNSONBURG – The Johnsonburg boys soccer team honored its trio of seniors before Johnsonburg's game against Port Allegany Wednesday night. Luke Shreffler, Trey Rose and Tommy Imbrogno were honored. The Gators would go on to win the game by a 7-2 margin. Kyle Sheldon had a good chance in the box for the Rams with 24 minutes left in the first half, Johnsonburg also had a free kick near the Port Allegany penalty area early in the first half. "For 30 minutes in the first half we played well," Johnsonburg coach Lance Rezmerski said. "For 20 minutes in the second half, we played real well. We got the score back from 3-0 to 3-2. We had them on their heels and then they got their composure back. Once they did, they showed why they're one of the best teams in District 9 right now. They're playing everybody tough and we're wishing them luck into the playoffs."The Rams stayed right with the Gators for much of the early portion of the game but Port Allegany ultimately broke through first as Scott Brookens scored for the Gators with just over 13 minutes left in the half. Tyler Kittilson wasted little time in extending the Port Allegany lead as he scored just over a minute later to put the Gators up 2-0. Sam Kysor added a goal off an assist from Brookens as the Gators led 3-0 at halftime. Caleb Hefright launched a perfect free kick into the upper left corner with 38:30 left in the second half to close the lead to 3-1. Johnsonburg then garnered a corner kick with 32:00 left and Hefright struck the ball from the corner. The ball seemed to go off a Port Allegany defender and into the net as the Rams cut the lead to one at 3-2 and were back into the game. The momentum would dissipate as Kittilson added another goal with 21:24 left to put the lead back to 4-2. Brookens scored again with 13:58 left and Kittilson poured in another goal with 9:39 left to put the lead to 6-2. Tyler Tucker rounded out the scoring for Port Allegany with a goal around seven minutes remaining. Johnsonburg finishes the regular season with this game. The Rams also won 1-0 against Clarion-Limestone Tuesday night. "The story of our life that hurt us this season is we lost seven games by one goal," Rezmerski said. "We've been competitive and for the kids to come back with this kind of an effort against a top-notch team after such a heartbreaking season, we were proud of them for that."Rezmerski said goalkeeper Mason Walters did an admirable job on the back line this year. "Mason Walters, all year long, he's done a good job in the goal," Rezmerski said. "When they're shooting that many times at you, they're bound to go in. He did a good job."Before the game, Johnsonburg honored the three seniors on the team which are listed below. n Tommy Imbrogno is the son of Tom and Nikki Imbrogno. His future plans are to attend St. Francis University and to major in Biology. n Trey Rose is the son of Robin and Timothy Rose. His future plans are to go to college for Musical Production and Engineering. n Luke Shreffler is the son of Kim Shreffler. His future plans are to attend a 4-year college and major in Accounting. "My seniors, it was a good night for them, they put up a good show," Rezmerski said.


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My Ghoul Friday
Check back often!
Recent Moans from the Minions...
Earlier this year, Alton Brown was promoting his recent book for his "Feasting on Asphalt" series. An event was held in Atlanta where the cost of admission basically equalled the cost of the book (of which you got one copy), plus an hour Q & A session with Alton, and draws for door prizes.
I'm a big fan of Alton Brown (not so much of the American version of "Iron Chef" - the original Japanese show is superior), and was even more impressed when he signed the zombie cartoon of him I'd found online by Cheyenne Wright. Alton has a dark sarcasm that I instantly felt at ease with, and he was amused when presented with my print out.
I also walked away with a crazy Kershaw utility knife that I won (was a bit concerned about bringing that back across the border - for all my American readers, it's easy to bring knives/weapons into the States but not so much into Canada) and a "Good Eats" bandage dispenser (with G.E. bandages). All in all, a great time.
And now this image hangs on my office wall, framed.
You may have noticed recently that the website has been sloooooow to load (beyond a zombie pace at times). Turns out our server is picking up the slack for a greedy, neighbouring server. We're currently dealing with our service provider and hope to have this rectified as soon as possible.
Please be patient if you are experiencing trouble. We apologize for the agonizing frustration this can cause (I'm ready to poke my eyes out over it), and hope everything will be back to normal soon.
In the meantime, keep creepin.
Ghoul Friday
Ok all you fellow Canadian Haunters. Consider this a call to action. Since we only tend to find each other accidentally, I'm making an effort to create a master directory of Haunts, Haunters, Bloggers, and Events across Canada.
I've just started building it, and will spend time this week (with the help of Google.ca) looking for all of you. If you think you have a website or know of a website that's worth listing, let me know. Read more about this by clicking on the Canadian Hauntings Pumpkin Image in the navigation menu on the right, or by following this link.
By the way, someone in Nova Scotia has already won top spot in my blogging section. The earlier you get your submission in and reviewed, the higher it will appear in the listing.
There is a YouTube clip that is currently making the rounds on forums. It features zombie puppets singing "Dust in the Wind" made famous by the band Kansas.
But before you go straight to the clip (posted at the end of this blog), let me tell you a bit more about the man behind it. As explorers of the World Wide Web, we are often impatient and click-happy which means we miss the treasures behind the initial finds. Matt Ficner is one of those treasures.
Matt is an artist of many mediums including (but not limited to) digital art, sculpting, painting, and puppetry. He formed MF Productions and has worked with Jim Henson Associates, Warner Brothers, Disney and the BBC. I always love to learn of artistic Canadians finding international success (Matt is actually from Ottawa, Ontario).
I picked this recipe up from Freddie and Cindy's Halloween website. For some reason, the link to their homepage wasn't working so I couldn't verify whether or not they allow other people to use their information. So Freddie and Cindy, if you're out there, I hope you don't mind that I have posted your idea.
Want to get fancy with the treats? There are oodles of recipe ideas on the official Rice Krispies website.
The theme for this year's Halloween party will be a children's restaurant/game centre like Chuck E. Cheeses. It will have games, a souvenir shop, and a dining area; all the amenities you'd expect to find at such an establishment (with a few, small changes).
The place is called Clive E. Cleavers and it has fallen into disrepair, though there are still some hints of what it was like in its hay-day...and on its last day.
My first prop is a simple acrylic painting on canvas. The idea was to create a birthday poster advertisement, encouraging patrons to book their next bash with Clive E. Cleavers. I wanted it to walk a fine line between normal and horror; make it believable (that something like this would be hanging in a children's theme restaurant) yet creepy and with a slight edge.
Clowns are a classic scare, and will always remain a top fright-sight in any haunt. For me, I am kind of 'clowned out' and will be trying to limit the amount of clown characters/images I'll be using.
I was recently sent a link for a site that acts as a handbook for Goths. At first I didn't know what to make of it, but after a little exploring (it can be a little overwhelming to navigate the site through the labyrinth of links and google ads) I found myself curious.
Gothic Portal is described as "A deep and varied portal dedicated to the dark life of the gothic subculture, fashion, music, dating, tourism, culture and poems". Gothic dating, you say? I must see more.
When I arrived home the other night, I stepped up to my front door with my head down, looking for my keys. I unlocked the door and stepped up again (favouring the left side of the doorway as I always do) to enter the enclosed porch. It wasn't until I turned around to close the door that I noticed what suddenly seemed impossible to miss.
A spider, the size of a Canadian loonie, had spun a masterpiece that blocked over a third of my doorway. Being shorter, and having a tendency to step up to the left, I was spared a face-full of cobweb.
As an artist, I always feel like I've breathed life into something when I create it. If this is true of all artists, then Dave O'Neill has some wonderfully dark children.
Dave is a young man in his twenties from Burlington Ontario whom I met at, yes, the Festival of Fear (by the way, I only have one or two more posts left regarding my adventure there). I was most interested in his zombie comic book art (or was it a graphic novel? I need to remember to bring a pen with me next time) called Horror Hills.
As it turns out, Dave is also a musician, actor, singer and writer:
I prefer writing on a typewriter; I find the clicking of it to be quite soothing and inspirational. I watch the stars. I dread the deep. I like robots, aliens, dinosaurs, zombies, vampires, monsters and anything else that nestles quietly within my brain, waiting to be put to paper.
While cruising the aisles of the Festival of Fear, I came across these wonderful Zombie puppets and plush toys by a local artist.
The puppets were a little on the pricey side, but they are one of a kind, hand made, and really, where else have you seen this product?
The artist's website, www.mylilzombie.com, is currently under construction but if you would like to contact her with questions, her email is firstname.lastname@example.com.
You gotta love the picture of George Romero (below) with a puppet in his likeness.
The best place to find current art and WIPs is Instagram
I'm also on Twitter but be prepared for political commentary
My self-published book is still available!
Craving more Halloween goodness?
Here are some sites to satisfy the hunger.
All content copyright © 2007-2017 GhoulFriday.com (unless otherwise noted). And remember, safety first! Please read and understand our full disclaimer.


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Check out all of Feedback's images.
I have now raised $11436 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation
and $4924 for Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic
from autographs at all of the shows and conventions! Now everyone who has a signed photo
of Feedback can feel GREAT, because they know they've helped be a hero to others!
If you watched "Who Wants To Be A Superhero" on the Sci Fi channel, you saw Feedback win the ultimate prize: IMMORTALITY! Check out
Dark Horse Comics to see when the first issue of Feedback
hits comic book shelves, and stay tuned for more information on the Sci Fi Channel's
Saturday Night Original Movie that will feature Feedback.
Regarding Mega Snake, first of all, I want to thank each of you for your support.
I've been reading the emails, IMDB and MySpace messages and Sci Fi forum posts, and although I felt extremely lucky before, the desire that everyone has expressed to see more Feedback has made me feel even luckier. You all are just awesome. Sci Fi should consider themselves lucky to have you, too!
Many of you asked me how I felt about Mega Snake. Obviously, I've known for a while that my role was pretty small, but I tried to be positive about it, and not be disappointed by the length of the role. After all, they could have just put my costume on a Bulgarian and it would have fulfilled the letter of the contract.
I was worried from the beginning that fans of the show would be disappointed with how things turned out. A year is a long time to wait, and I really wanted that loyalty to be rewarded.
I didn't have any control over the movie, obviously. The execs at Sci Fi thought they were doing something pretty special by allowing me to even be in the film, and for that I remain grateful. They paid for my flight to Bulgaria, and I'm going to post some behind-the-scenes footage that I took while I was there, as soon as I get it edited together.
Sometimes, the only way you can make an experience positive is by having a positive attitude, but that doesn't mean that I'm not disappointed, too. I hope that the outcry from the fans will encourage Sci Fi to do something more, because I'd love to have the challenge of doing a really cool Feedback film.
So if you want to express to Sci Fi how you feel, here are a few quick options:
In the meantime, we've been creating some great audio dramas over at Broken Sea (http://www.brokensea.com/feedback/feedback.htm) and be sure to check out Tech Support, the official Feedback Fan Club with links to the group on the left side of this page.
It's nice to know that people really care about me receiving the prize. And I think I know why. Because, in a way, it would be proof that people really can have a dream come true. And in this day and age, when there is so much evidence of dreams being crushed, we need a little hope.
In a way, this is just like another challenge from the show. It really isn't up to other people to make our dreams come true. It's up to us. So that's what we'll do.
August 31st - Feedback was named Stan Lee's Next Great Superhero.
The most amazing feeling
in the world, second only to helping another person. A huge thanks to everyone
who sent MySpace messages, posted comments, sent emails, and made phone calls of support!
August 24th - It was a gut-wrenching night - Major Victory is no longer with us.
Fat Momma and I must compete next week for the win.
August 17th - Now Creature and Lemuria are gone. Only Major Victory, Fat Momma,
and I remain. The final three!
August 10th - We lost Monkey Woman
and Ty'Veculus tonight... and a new
and deadly supervillain was revealed - The Dark Enforcer!
The Feedback website, www.forcefeedback.tv
went online, Wednesday, August 9th, the night before episode 3.
August 4th - Feedback reveals details of his early childhood to a reporter from
Las Cruces in an interview with the
Las Cruces Sun-News.
August 3rd - We lost Cell Phone Girl
and Iron Enforcer tonight... our
numbers are dwindling....
The Feedback Fan Club site
went online on July 30th, created by fans who we now know as, "Tech Support!"
Thanks for the support! Game on!
July 27th - The first episode of Who Wants To Be a Superhero airs, and we immediately
lose two great heroes: Levity, and
my good friend Nitro G.
Feedback was there at the Who Wants To Be a Superhero panel at The San Diego Comic Con on Friday, July 21st, from 11:30 - 12:30 PM.
Feedback was also at The San Diego Comic Con in the Dark Horse booth, with his fellow heroes on Friday, July 21st, from 5:00 - 6:00 PM.
Check out the interviews of all the heroes on the Dark Horse web site.


text:
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text:
Volume 20, Number 3
April/May 2003
Can Business as Usual Lead You to Extinction?
By Charles F. RobinsonCharles F. Robinson is an elder law
attorney in Clearwater, Florida. He is past chair of the American Bar Association Law Practice Management Section and has served on the ABA Coordinating Commission on Legal Technology and the ABA Commission on Legal Problems of the Elderly. For more information see his websites, www.Charlie-Robinson.com and www.Charlierobinsonfuturist.com.
In 1998, the American Bar Foundation published a study comparing the earnings of Chicago lawyers in 1995 to those of Chicago lawyers in 1975. Solo practitioners suffered a 30 percent loss of mean earnings during that time period, and a 45 percent decline in median incomes.1 If the Chicago experience reflects the rest of the country, solos and small firm lawyers need to look seriously at strategies to reverse this trend.
One reason for the decline in income has undoubtedly been the encroachment by non-lawyers into businesses that were once our exclusive domain. To remain competitive, lawyers need to remain responsive to the changing needs of our clients. In particular, we must consider ancillary business arrangements, multidisciplinary practice (MDP), and other nontraditional practices. The status quo is simply not an option.
There seems to be a near consensus from the bench that our civil justice system is in the middle of a huge crisis of relevance. Civil justice is perceived to take too long and cost too much. A professional mediator recently suggested that alternative dispute resolution (ADR) is now the real dispute resolution, and litigation is the alternative. What happens to lawyers if (or when) pro se or Internet negotiating systems become the dominant way civil disputes are resolved? As of 1999, there were more than 45,000 pro se litigators in the Florida court system on any given day. The numbers are higher now. The pro se trend is nationwide and growing. In Florida nearly 80 percent of marriage dissolutions are now handled without a lawyer on one side, and more than one-third without a lawyer on either side. In some cases the couple cannot afford lawyer services, but in many cases the parties don't believe that a lawyer will be worth the cost. Many of these pro se cases were bread and butter to sole general practitioners ten or less years ago.The Erosion of Guild Power
When I started in law practice, lawyers drafted cheap wills with the expectation that profit would come from probate administration. Trusts were almost always testamentary; these trusts were administered by bank trust departments or lawyers, rarely family members.
Law practice functioned as a guild in those days. The bar had a monopoly on what it defined as legal services. As a classic guild, the bar determined who could be a member, what were the standards for service quality, what the prices of those services would be, and what quantity of services could be performed.
Our guild power started to erode when title companies appeared on the scene and competed effectively against real estate lawyers, particularly in the residential real estate practice. In 1965, Norman F. Dacey wrote How to Avoid Probate, a self-help book complete with living trusts, wills, and related forms. Lawyers made cynical jokes about the book and suggested that the loss of estate business would eventually be replaced by litigation over the poorly drafted trusts. Although the book was attacked by the New York County Lawyers' Association and enjoined as unlicensed practice of law (UPL), the Supreme Court of New York ruled that publishing a book is not the practice of law regardless of subject matter. The first run of Dacey's book sold more than 600,000 copies. Soon the antiprobate movement that Dacey started gained momentum until many viewed "probate" as a four-letter word.
A few lawyers, often working with financial planners, broke away from the traditional will practice and started preparing living trusts in volume and charging significantly higher fees, preferring the "pay me now to avoid probate" approach as opposed to the "pay me later, assuming I outlive you and you don't outsmart me by avoiding probate" approach favored by the traditionalists.
I was one of those traditionalist young lawyers working as an associate for a traditionalist lawyer. We continued business as usual—cranking out $25 wills, or two for $35. We believed that our will files would "mature" in due time and that our probate practice would make up for the loss-leader wills we prepared.
We were wrong. Yet many of us kept doing our will practice and eventually added the living trust as an option that ultimately dominated what had been the will practice. As the living trust became more popular, we found ourselves in a price contest. Potential clients started calling our offices asking for price quotes on living trust preparation. When consumers call for price quotes, they believe they are buying commodity services.
In 1975 the U.S. Supreme Court made it clear that our profession was losing guild status; in Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar 421 U.S. 773, the Court struck down minimum fee schedules as an antitrust violation. In 1977 Bates v. State Bar of Arizona 433 U.S. 350 came along, allowing lawyers to advertise. If one can advertise services and the bar association can't hold members to a fee schedule, the only remaining guild power is the bar exam and the power to regulate ethical behavior.Law as a Commodity Service
The only exclusivity lawyers now have in the process of estate planning is in drafting documents, which has the lowest perceived value of any part of the process ("Don't you just push a button, fill in some names, and my will comes popping out of the word processor?"). Financial planners, brokers, and accountants have taken over much of the planning process. I believe the non-lawyers leave drafting to lawyers because lawyers will do the work for lower fees than what planners charge to do the work. Law-yers are left with a sophisticated, liability-ridden opportunity to be perceived as commodity service providers. Commodity goods and services are sold on the basis of price and service, not on the addition of value. Few lawyers can compete effectively on volume of service rendered.
The phone call comes in something like this: "Hello, Charlie, this is Nate George from ABC CPA and Investments, P.A. I am sitting here with your longtime client Bob Bigbucks. Bob says you have helped him many times through the years. He is a big fan of yours. Our office has done a financial analysis and determined that Bob needs a Qualified Personal Residence Trust, an Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust, and a new QTIP/Credit Shelter Trust. We have allocated $500 for total attorney fees to draft these documents. We will understand if you decline the work at this price, but we have other lawyers who will draft the documents for Bob. He wanted to give you first shot at doing the work. By the way, the client is leaving for a long trip next Wednesday, so we will need everything prepared by Monday afternoon. Will you do it?"
By 2003 the traditional trust and estate practice had atrophied to commodity level, with some exceptions. Some lawyers are finding valuable niche practices. Lawyers whose clients have very high net worth are now offering a set of concierge-type services that extend past traditional trust services. For example, for a client with a net worth over $25 million, the lawyer could take on the responsibility of overseeing investment and tax advisers, along with preparing documents. In addition, if the client's yard service quits or fails to show up, the law firm will contract for these services, as well.
Another niche involves fiduciary planning for special needs. The special needs beneficiary may be a disabled adult with a substantial personal injury award or inheritance. Expertise is required in helping the injured or disabled person have a game plan to maximize the asset utilization with an eye to public benefits where appropriate.My Solution: A Fiduciary Services Alliance
As minimum asset requirements kept growing, trust offices became consolidated in distant locales, and a pool was assigned to trusts with assets of less than seven figures, I started thinking about how I might develop a broad fiduciary services practice with a highly developed infrastructure (asset custody, accounting, and investment services), yet maintain the personal relationships with clients I value so highly.
To make my fiduciary services dreams come true, I believed I would need a CPA who was fascinated by and skilled in fiduciary tax and accounting work, an investment adviser skilled and experienced in fiduciary investment requirements, and a means
of tying all the players together in a cost-
effective group able to communicate fully.
All efforts to set up the fiduciary alliance failed. There were too many players, and prices would exceed traditional trust department fees. I was ready to give up when, in the early 1990s, the answer arrived in the form of United Trust. More than 20 years ago, the principals of United Trust saw the opportunity to partner with law firms doing fiduciary work. United Trust is a full-service, traditional trust department with an important difference: United Trust "wholesales" trust services to qualified law firms by serving as the law firm's back office. There is no fee sharing. Change was scary, but I realized that the risks inherent in the status quo were ever scarier. I took the plunge, and I've not regretted it.Ancillary Business Practice and Elder Law
In the mid-1980s, I decided to focus my practice on the needs of middle-class elders. I learned that most did not place a lot of value on estate planning because death was not the typical concern. My clients were afraid of becoming incapacitated and losing control of their lives. They were terrified at the prospect of losing their life savings in the event of an extended nursing-home stay. I went into elder law, before it had a name, to help folks deal with the complex issues of incapacity and impoverishment.
As the field of elder law has matured and grown through the years, not only have more lawyers become involved—so have financial planners, CPAs, and others. Prices are dropping, the government is getting tougher, and, once again, there are no laurels to rest on. Some elder law attorneys are licensed to sell annuities, investments, long-term care insurance, and other products as part of the elder law practice. There is evidence that many consumers like the idea of one-stop shopping for these services (remember the imaginary phone call above). Others are setting up separate ancillary financial planning business entities or affiliating with businesses and sharing commission income.
UPL will not stop the competition from non-lawyers in the elder law field any more than it has in other areas of practice. Courts have come up with hundreds of definitions of law practice but none that fits all situations. I believe that if non-lawyers do their work competently, UPL will not come into play. A number of years ago, the Florida Bar UPL team went after actuaries for preparing deferred compensation plans. The Florida Supreme Court couldn't find public harm and allowed the practice to continue.
Now that UPL is no longer a protection for lawyers, we should be able to compete openly with the non-lawyers just as they compete openly with us, right? Wrong, at least in many states. For instance, is it an ethical violation to advise an estate-planning client on the need for life insurance and then receive part or all of the commission from the sale? Is it possible for an attorney to offer independent advice and still profit if the client takes the advice? In my home state of Florida, there is an ethics opinion that says I can advise a client that she needs life insurance and tell her I am licensed to sell insurance, or am affiliated with an agency that is one of her choices for the insurance, but it is unethical for me to tell her how much insurance she needs. Go figure.A Test to Help You Decide: Status Quo or Nontraditional Practice
Microsoft founder Bill Gates observes that we tend to overestimate what change will take place during the next two years and underestimate the change that will take place during the next ten years. Picture your practice as remaining status quo ten to 15 years from now. As an exercise, write a story or scenario describing your practice in 2015 as you would describe your practice today. In writing this scenario, tell how you were able to deal
with some of the following possibilities
without having to change: technology changes; self-help lawyering; nontraditional legal service providers; the Internet; changes in how the courts work; the profession's traditional arrogance in the face of change; the erosion of public confidence in the profession; the elimination of billable hours; bar-owned ADR centers; increased discipline; MDP; or judicial determination that UPL violates the Commerce Clause.
Now take a look at how you might change your practice and write a scenario to get a sense of what your new practice can become. Go through the same possibilities and any more you think likely. If the new scenario doesn't look a lot better than the status quo, consider more practice alternatives until you can draft a scenario that describes the way you prefer your personal and professional life to evolve over the years to come.
Major change is very tough for a profession trained to look to the past (stare decisis) to predict the future, but those who won't change may be looking for different occupations in the years to come.
Native American tribal wisdom says that when you discover you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount. In law firms we often try other strategies with dead horses, including the following:
l Buying a stronger whip
l Changing riders
l Saying things like, "This is the way we always have ridden this horse"
l Appointing a committee to study the horse
l Arranging to visit other firms to see how they ride dead horses
l Increasing the standards to ride dead horses
l Declaring the horse is "better, faster, and cheaper" when dead
l Harnessing several dead horses together for increased speed
It is time for solo and small firm lawyers to start looking for a new horse.Notes
1.American Bar Foundation Report (1998)
at 19.
Ancillary Business Practice. According to Model Rule 5.7 of the Model Rules of Professional Conduct, ancillary services are those that traditionally may be provided by lawyers but if provided by non-lawyers will not draw a successful unlicensed practice of law (UPL) complaint. In other words, ancillary or law-related services—services such as real estate closing and title insurance—are fair game for any provider in the marketplace. In many parts of the country, independent title companies have virtually replaced lawyers in residential and, in some cases, commercial contracts and closings as well. Lawyers or law firms have opened separate title companies (ancillary businesses) in order to stay in the real estate closing business. The ancillary business must make it clear to customers that it is not providing legal advice and there is no confidentiality or attorney-client privilege.
Multidisciplinary Practice (MDP). An MDP is an entity that provides legal services as one but not all of its services and where lawyers and non-lawyers share ownership and fees. Another form of MDP is an arrangement where law firms and other service providers share a fee that covers services for all members. MDP is currently not allowed under Model Rule 5.4, which prohibits fee sharing between a lawyer or law firm and a non-lawyer and forming a partnership with a non-lawyer if any of the entities' services include the practice of law. However, a number of states have changed their rules to allow limited MDP practice. (See www.abanet.org/
cpr to review the MDP Commission report and developments since the final report was issued in 2000.)
Ancillary business tends to favor large firms. It takes capital to open, staff, manage, and market a new business. Many solo and small firm practitioners do not have the capital, the time, or the experience to manage their law practices very well, not to mention the additional complications of a separate business. MDP allows for alliances of several disciplines that share fees and responsibility and provides a one-stop solution for many client problems.
Are You Ready for a Little Something on the Side?The status quo may no longer be an option, but ancillary business practice is not free of risks, either. Here are some questions to help you decide whether to take the plunge:
l Will your ancillary business create irreconcilable conflicts of interest with your law practice, so that you would lose from your existing law practice what you would gain from the ancillary business?
l Are you prepared to invest capital and take on management responsibilities in a new entity? If you are not fascinated with law firm management, how will you handle ancillary business management and law firm management at the same time?
l Have you prepared a business plan and a marketing plan for your proposed ancillary business?
l What is the level of competition for your proposed ancillary business?
l Are you getting into an ancillary business in the early pre-growth or growth phase of the business, or is it a mature business with high levels of competition?
l Does the proposed ancillary business fit your interests and your talents, or do you see it only as a means to financial success?
l Have you sought an ethics opinion from your state bar regarding your ancillary business idea?


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About the Fort Leonard Wood & St. Robert Annex Campuses
Helping students prepare for lives and careers in the 21st Century
The CCPS Fort Leonard Wood and St. Robert Annex campuses offer over 200 courses a year in over 30 degree programs including the Associates of Science, Bachelors of Science, and Masters degrees, as well as the Servicemembers Opportunity College, and the Troops to Teachers Program.
The St. Robert Annex campus was completed in March 2003 and boasts eight staff & faculty offices, 14 classrooms, two Biology/Chemistry laboratories, two computer laboratories, a library, a student lounge, and ample parking.
The Fort Leonard Wood and St. Robert campuses are accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and are degree granting campuses. The elementary and secondary education and the master in education (M.Ed) programs are accredited by the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (N.C.A.T.E).